


Double Tap

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Apocalypse, Multi, Post-Sburb, Zombies, Zombiestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:02:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks he's been through the end of the world already.</p><p>-----</p><p>Years after the game has ended, the kids are confronted with an entirely different apocalypse scenario. Written for a prompt on the kinkmeme. Ongoing, will be updated whenever I can find the time.</p><p>Also, I guess warnings for mention of PTSD-like symptoms, character death, and copious amounts of sad?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Tap

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt: http://homesmut.livejournal.com/12138.html?thread=24361066#t24505962

He thinks he's been through the end of the world already.

With any other teenager, this would be your run-of-the-mill overblown statement. Emotions running rampant, everything's life and death, constant melodrama, chalk it up to raging hormones. A few years ago, if he'd heard someone say that, he'd probably have grinned at the sheer hyperbole of it.

But John Egbert thinks this, and when he thinks it, it's true. Because he _has_.

They've all suffered the repercussions. Dave has nightmares that he won't admit to anyone but the other three of them, terrible screaming night terrors that make him wake up with his throat raw. Rose's sharp wit has gotten sharper, and she deflects any expressions of concern but keeps a bottle of Xanax close at hand. Jade won't say what's bothering her, but she smiles less than she used to, and once John catches her sitting cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, rolling around a handful of marbles and staring at them as if she expected to see something in them--something wonderful or terrible, he doesn't know and he's afraid to ask.

And John...

He's their leader, despite his best efforts to convince them otherwise, and the experience of _being_ a leader has, he thinks, aged him. Sometimes in a good way, like he does definitely feel more adult and capable and all that, but sometimes his throat closes up with the force of all the responsibility and he goes into the kitchen and looks at the empty oven and thinks _Yeah, maybe I should bake something_. He carries around a pipe in his jacket pocket, and one time he tries smoking it but the taste still makes him go _bluh_ , and he wonders if maybe he still has some growing up to do.

Still, things have settled down a lot in the past few years. The four of them are closer than ever, and since the trolls ended up on Earth there are at least a few more people to talk to who know what really happened, who remember, who were there.

John graduates high school, decides to take a year off, sells his dad's house. He signs a lease on an apartment with Dave, and they spend an entire afternoon with a moving van idling out front on the sun-warmed asphalt, the driver getting increasingly pissed-off as the two guys argue over whether Dave's turntables can go in the living room or not, and no, John cannot put up that shitty _Wicker Man_ poster, and since it's Dave's Xbox he gets first controller forever and ever, amen.

They have a couple of people over for a housewarming party. (Well, people and trolls.) Jade brings them a potted plant, and Gamzee hands John a two-liter bottle of Faygo with a bow around it, and Karkat just sidles through the door scowling, hands shoved in his pockets like he's offended that they would even maybe sort of expect him to bring a gift or at least say thanks for inviting him. Unsurprisingly, somewhere over the course of her adolescence Rose learned to mix a mean cocktail, and they all get pleasantly plastered and stay up until three in the morning. At around two-thirty, Dave fields their very first noise complaint from the neighbors. Everyone fights over the shitty couch obtained from Craigslist, and when they wake up in the morning there are several headaches, but none too awful, and John makes pancakes.

John gets a job at a bookstore, which he finds pleasingly nostalgic and unthreatening. Dave's making a killing designing shitty iPhone apps. They're thinking of adopting a puppy, but keep putting it off because John insists on the name Casey and Dave thinks it's stupid. They both turn nineteen, and John breathes a secret sigh of relief when his birthday passes totally uneventfully.

So all in all, as far as John's concerned, things are kind of possibly looking up.

Which makes it even more upsetting when the zombie apocalypse arrives.

\-----

 **WEEKS IN THE FUTURE (but not many):**

One thing Dave Strider has gotten really fucking good at is _running_. Like, flat-out, sprinting, balls-to-the-wall _flying_ down the road away from shit.

It would be embarrassing if it weren't so absolutely fundamentally useful. Because there is a whole lot of scary shit out there to run from, and sometimes there's no use fighting.

Right now he's crouching behind a long-parked car in the parking lot of a convenience store, radioing for backup.

"Rez?" There's empty air on the other end, not even those creepy heavy troll breathing sounds she can't keep herself from making. "Come in? Fuck, Terezi, do you read me? I am an open fucking book here, feast your eyes on my elegant hand-lettered script."

Nothing.

Dave mashes the button down on the shitty walkie-talkie so hard he wouldn't be surprised if the plastic cracks. He wishes to god he had his iPhone, but obviously no actual fucking phones are working right now, let alone the level of technological assistance he's used to. They started using the stupid battery-powered things about a week ago, pilfered from an empty Wal-Mart along with a plentiful supply of AAs. It's better than nothing, but it's also frustrating as hell. And it's really hard to figure out when you've just got a shitty walkie-talkie versus when something's really wrong.

He swallows hard. "Terezi?"

And that's when the first zombie shambles across the street, followed by a whole rotting misshapen horde. The lead guy is big, or was when he was alive, but his beer gut is spilling out intestines that tangle around his legs, and there's a huge chunk missing from one of his arms. They're surprisingly fast--not super-fast, none of that _Dawn of the Dead_ bullshit--but quick enough to keep you on you toes, definitely. Quick enough that running like hell has become the primary method of defense.

Dave's all set to do that, but when he glances over to the space behind the building, where his truck's parked, he sees another shuffling forward of dead flesh. There's a moan to accompany it, a moan that would be cliched if it weren't threatening to make him pee in his fucking pants.

No way out.

Dave stands up, cursing a masterful stream of profanity, shoves the walkie into his belt, and draws his katana, sliding one foot back into strife-ready stance.

He opens his mouth, and what comes out, softly ( _weirdly_ , because he's not sure where it even comes from), is:

"Caw caw, motherfuckers."

\-----

Their hideout, let's face it, is not ideal.

It's a convenience store a couple of miles outside of town, one of those places that used to have a gas station attached to it but hasn't for years now. The sign outside is blank, and all the grass by the roadside is dead or dying. Rose wants to make a comparison between that grass and their dwindling band of survivors, but even _her_ tolerance for purple prose has its limits.

It was Karkat's idea, actually. Rose had argued against it--strenuously, in fact--but in the week or so they've been there she's had to admit it wasn't the worst move they could've made. It's neither close enough to populated areas that they're under constant threat of attack, nor so far from anything that there's nowhere else to go if they have to leave in a hurry. There are a few exits, making it easily fortifiable, but not a death trap if one of the doors is breached. And there's an impressive array of items that would be useful in a pinch. Food, albeit mostly of the Mountain-Dew-and-Cup-Noodles variety. Basic medical supplies: gauze, Tylenol, Pepto-Bismol ("Condoms," Dave had deadpanned as they were casing the place, holding up a wrapped Magnum and dangling it between his fingertips suggestively before Terezi swatted him). And a bunch of other things, things that will always come in handy, basic tools, lighters, flashlights, gallon jugs of water.

"I confess," Rose had commented after a few days, "this was not a completely asinine strategic move."

To Karkat's credit, he'd refrained from smirking.

So they're here, the eight--no, fuck, the seven of them--and they're sleeping on the floor on scavenged mattresses and sofa pillows. Terezi, unbelievably, has made her bed entirely out of stuffed animals, plundered from an abandoned Toys 'R Us. Rose cannot quite fathom how this is comfortable, but she's long since given up on understanding the trolls' obsession with piles. (At first she'd assumed it was some long-dormant hibernation instinct, useless in the modern era but still deeply rooted, but none of the trolls had ever been able to give her a straight answer and so she'd logged it away in the section of her mind labeled "Unexplainable Phenomena.")

Rose has become sort of their unofficial tactician. She's smart, she knows, if a bit verbose, and has a knack for imagining all possible outcomes of a given scenario. (It's a little like Seeing, but much less certain, at least in a cosmic sense, and what she wouldn't give nowadays for a crystal ball. She has to make do with her own mind, and it makes her by turns proud and desperately worried.) And in their current situation she's pretty much useless in a fight. She can still wield a pair of knitting needles like nobody's business, but with zombies, if they get close enough to be within needle-range, you're probably already fucked.

She's not sleeping too well--even mild benzodiazepine withdrawal will do that to you--and she gets nauseous easily, but the discomfort lessened considerably after the first few days, and she refuses to complain. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, and she supposes they're all very likely to be dead soon anyway. Which is probably an unhealthy way of regarding the world, but, she thinks, not an unrealistic one.

It's late in the night, or possibly early in the morning, and she's sitting with her back against one of the glass-fronted drink cases, knitting something. She hasn't decided what yet, and has been putting off deciding for awhile, so right now it's just this long rectangular thing, too wide for a scarf but not nearly long enough for a blanket. It's something to do with her hands, at least.

John gives sort of a mumbling whine in his sleep and draws his blanket up around his shoulders as he turns over. He'd stayed up later than he usually had, waiting for Dave and Terezi to come back, and had finally fallen asleep, exhausted with fear. Rose had tried to comfort him--they weren't all _that_ late coming back, and any number of things could've delayed them--but when she'd said the words out loud, they'd sounded stupid, even to her. "I'll wait up for them," she'd promised, stroking his hair helplessly, and John had gone to sleep clutching her hand. She'd waited for longer than she'd meant to before extracting herself from him and resuming her preferred place in the corner.

Rolling over, he's facing her now, and he looks younger in sleep, younger without his glasses on. But he's still worried, the thin crease between his eyebrows hasn't gone away even in his dreams, and his breathing comes in fits and starts. Rose shifts her position and picks up her knitting again, feeling her way over the loops of yarn.

Even though there's no electricity, and hasn't been for weeks now, she still misses the lack of it. Silences are more silent now; in the real world--the world before--even if she were sitting in a darkened convenience store, there would still be the low meditative hum of the refrigerators and the muted buzz of a neon sign outside. There would be _something_. Rose thinks of another evening, years earlier, when the power went out. It had been raining then. It's not now. The sky is clear and the stars, if you were stupid enough to wander outside, would be absurdly pretty.

There's a faint sigh from across the room. Karkat's sitting, as usual, with his back against the counter, eyes open in the darkness, staring at nothing. His hands are in his lap, fingering the machete he's taken to carrying around (sickles are hard to come by these days). A thin strand of moonlight glints off the blade as he tilts it slightly.

"You should go to sleep," Rose says softly, knowing he won't listen. "It won't do anyone any good, your staying up all night."

"I could say the same to you," Karkat whispers, a flash of annoyance crossing his features before retreating quickly. He's still quick to judge, quick to snap, but he doesn't hold onto the anger for as long now. He's grown up a lot, and Rose likes him better for it.

"Besides," he goes on, "this is what I'm used to doing when everything goes to shit. Not sleeping, that is." He squares his thin shoulders and leans back against the counter, his head dropping back against it, eyes still wide, staring at the water-stained ceiling tiles. "It makes me feel better."

Rose almost laughs, but she doesn't. Her knitting needles click in the silence like the morse-code response of some enormous crab, and Karkat rewards her with the thinnest of smiles.


End file.
